Review of Mazes by Nick

== Second pass Review==

Mark & Co.,

I went through what is currently up for the Mazes chapter. I made some changes to correct typos, avoid repetition, and select different words in a few cases where that seemed uncontroversial. You can see the changes on the Wiki, of course. I didn't fix every occurrence of 10 PRINT, but did fix it in a few places. I encourage people to make word- and phrase-level edits that seem to improve the text. Anyone can look over these changes and revert or further modify them if you find them problematic.

Here are some more general comments:

## Comments on "A Maze Generator By any Other Name":

"Or is this output actually a maze?" is still a real lead balloon for me, and doesn't seem to me like a good idea for the second sentence (or for anything outside of a footnote). It could possibly be buried further down in the chapter, I suppose, where the question is currently dealt with.

I still consider this a question that has no implication. By that I mean the following: If you answer "yes!", the rest of the chapter about the cultural relevance of mazes is relevant. If you answer "no!", you have to follow up by noting that the printed variants nevertheless identify the output as mazes, and you'd have to note that the output evokes the concept of the maze and leads people to think about mazes. So the rest of the chapter, which is about the cultural relevance of the maze and how it pertains to the program, is *still* relevant. What's largely irrelevant is this particular question, unless answering it can be used to obliquely explain something meaningful - that confusion and a tangle is more essential to the maze than a contrived solution, for instance. If we get into that sort of discussion, we'd be justified in treating the question in the main text.

The second paragraph seems to me to be the obvious right way to introduce

this chapter.

## Comments on "Cultural History of Mazes":

I'd prefer that we shorten the "What is a Maze?" sub-section for reasons stated above. I added to and edited the last paragraph of the section, which now reads:

"Certainly all of the definitions of maze attend the perception of this particular program, but these definitions demonstrate that the output does qualify as a maze. But what if one wanted to insist on the strictest possible view of the constructed puzzle-maze with a single solution, denying that the output of this program is a maze at every moment? Even then, what could the output possibly suggest, what could it evoke in the viewer, if not the concept of the maze? 10 PRINT is a maze-generator, but even if there are some who deny this, they will have to grant that it is a program that is associated with and falls under the shroud of the myths of mazes and labyrinths."

The last sentence of the section overall has a good idea; invoking Moore's Law (and probably absurdity) is nice. We should work at it a bit further to see if we can up the cleverness and also explain why the idea of the largest computer-generated maze is a silly one. Let's build on this a bit, anyway.

## Comments on "Ancient/Mythological Mazes":

I don't know if this matters, but "thread" is an encapsulated part of a

computer process, which is why Ian, rv6502 and I named our C64 demo based

on 10 PRINT "thread."

I also have an idea of how a thread could help you get out of a unicursal labyrinth, something I think we've been puzzling over. (Have we?) Let's say the reason people have trouble getting out is that they keep getting turned around, so they don't know which way they were going. (I can't think of any other reason people would have trouble leaving a labyrinth.) In this case, tying the thread to something near the entrance, letting it out as you go further into the labyrinth, and taking it up as you leave would point you in the right direction.

The alien nature of the maze is really captured by the Herodotus quote: "it is hard to believe that they are the work of men".

"Jeremy Douglass argues that the history of mazes should not start with the earliest mention or depiction of mazes but with the formulation of walled architecture or social spaces with intersecting passages"

Unless we're quoting an article that Jeremy wrote and published previously - and I don't see a citation here - it's either "We argue that ..." or simply "The history of mazes ..." (I'm changing it to the latter.) Our book is a collective work that may have a few sidebars, but arguments about the program are ours.

## Comments on "Religious Labyrinths":

I suggest that we need either a direct or indirect implication of this

aspect of the maze.

A direct implication would be "Mazes in Western culture make people think of religion, because of their history, so when people look at the output of the program, they think of religion."

An indirect implication would be "Mazes would not have the cultural

associations that they have today without their religious connections. So

when people look at the output of 10 PRINT, what they think of is affected

by religious labyrinths, even though they do not directly think of

religion. Specifically, religious labyrinths ..."

The allegorical path is probably the most obvious way to make this

connection, one way or the other.

## Comments on "Hedgerow Mazes":

How often did these mazes actually confine people and how often were they

marked on the ground? The first quote from Dream suggests they are just

marks on the ground.

Is the maze at this time mainly, or exclusively, life-sized? There are

earlier images of labyrinths on coins, but has the maze returned at this

time to a main architectural/horticultural life-sized norm?

## Comments on "Mazes in RPGS/Game Books"

Some important questions about these mazes: What they mean, and how do they mean differently from previous mazes? Controlling architect/DM? Surprises? What aspects of past mazes were amplified, which ones suppressed?

## Comments on "Computing History of Mazes"

Very good stuff here, but I have a few suggestions.

The first paragraph under "Procedural Mazes" does not make this concept clear to me. If a maze is laid out in a BASIC program or as a data structure on a sector of a disk, does it "coherently exist in a physical or visual space"? When the first person maps a maze from, e.g., Zork, does that make the previous procedural maze no longer a procedural maze? What counts as being "generated by algorithms" as opposed to loaded from memory?

Finally, this doesn't seem like the right section for bringing in the two main print variants of the program. I suggest we do that earlier - maybe in the introduction - and refer to that as necessary.

## Comments on "Variations on a maze"

I started on this but haven't finished. We need to change all of the

character codes from their "low" values (e.g., 109) to their "high" values

(205) for consistency with the title program and the two variants and for

clarity. I've done this for 109/110 but not the rest.

## Comments on "Maze as Dance"

This reads very well. The one thing I'd like to see to make the connection very strongly is some reference to BASIC programs (not particularly 10 PRINT) as "dancing" or having output that "dances." For example, from p. 166 of the C64 Programmer's Reference Guide:

"THE DANCING MOUSE-A SPRITE PROGRAM EXAMPLE

Sometimes the techniques described in a programmer's reference manual are

difficult to understand, so we've put together a fun sprite program called

"Michael's Dancing Mouse." This program uses three different sprites in a

cute animation with sound effects ..."

A 30-line program follows. Each statement is explicated on the following

pages.

If we establish that some programs, particularly ones that were also official examples from Commodore for the C64, are explicitly said to dance, we can discuss what behaviors of these programs constitute dancing ... and show how 10 PRINT shares some or all of those behaviors.

That's all for now...